Little Falls transcript. [volume] (Little Falls, Morrison County, Minn.) 1876-1894, 1887-05-06
BUILDINGS THAT ARE uNLUckY.
Houses Noted for Fires, Suicides, and
Other Calam1ties.

Houses Noted for Fires, Suicides, and
Other Calam1ties.
Il am not superstitious, as general
rule,' said Liberty street real estate
dealer, as he cruised about the ex-
change looking for unwary buyers the
other day, ''but in the course of twenty
years. experience in renting and selling
property in New York I have noticed
things that seem impossible to explain
except by luck or fate. There are some
buildings in this city which, for no ap-
parent cause, are sure to make trouble
for their owners and tenants as the sun
is to shine. No amount of care or
prudence will make them profitable,
while buildings right next to them,
which are neglected by owners and
abused by tenants, will be lucky all the
time. There is a building on Church
street where a suicide has occurred
once iAevery twenty months for years.
1t Is a good building, light, well con-
structed, desirable in every way, but
you can't get half the rents for that as
you can in the next building, because it
has the reputation of being what people
who use slang call ''hoodoo,' and
every tenant who goes into it is haunt
ed by the fear that he is going to fail
or be burned out or loose his mother-in-
law. It's all on account of these sui
cides. They have given it bad name,
and that's thousand times harder to
drive out of house than rats
know tenement-house on the East
side that is given over to fires. The
landlord has made the most extraordin-
airy efforts to prevent them, hired
watchmen, put in re-proofng, auto
matte alarms, kept the police on the
alert, but fires are the rule in that
house, and now you can scarcely hire
people to live iii it. It isn't incendiar-
ism. suppose it's what cool scientific
people would call mere coincidence, but
most people would say it was luck.
The house is 'hoodooed' in the minds
OF tenants anyway.
''There are some houses which none
but undesirable tenants will occupy in
spite of everything you can do.
know a man who recently came into
possession of a fine building not
stones throw from this exchange which
had been given up to rag lofts in spite
of the efforts of the former owner to
get them out. He spent more than
$40, 600 in fixing up the building, made
over the rooms into handsome offices,
put in an elevator, and made the rents
low. The building is in good locality
for otfce-renters; and in short time it
was full of desirable tenants The
man congratulated himself on his fore
sight and wisdom. In a month one
tenant failed. another skipped to Cana.
da, another eloped with the landlady.
The signs came down, the people went
out, and in a year the rag lofts were
back again. / don't know how to ex.
plain it, but you couldn't make money
out of that building to, save your life.
On the next corner was building not
half as good or desirable in anv wav.
and the owner was clearing more than
$4,000 a year from it.
zone of the most expensive build
ings on lower Broadway is supposed to
be 'hoodooed,' by the fact that part OF
the land it stands ON is owned BY an
old miser, who won't sell. but exacts
an enormous rate for the lease. ANY
way, there are more failures in that
building than in any other on the street,
tenants are continually turning out to
be defaulters, the elevator is contin-
uallv falling on somebody, people are
always tumbling downstairs and
breaking their limbs children drop
out of the windows, signs slip from
their places, the steam-heating appara-
tus is perpetually out Of order, and
the owner has worried himself to a +
feshless bone Neso Fork Mail and
EZpress. 1..s e. #. z5 H.. .} /.